Chapter Twelve #2
“You heard me before,” he said. “Now you see with your own eyes what your folly has earned you. There is no royal prize here. I advise you to leave while you may.”
The man with the club spat into the snow. “She looks common enough,” he said grudgingly. “No crown on ‘er head.”
“Crown or no crown, there is talk of royal blood,” the leader replied, as if arguing with himself as much as with them. “Her people would pay for her.”
“If my ‘people’ are my father and mother,” Miss Bennet said, with a composure that astonished Darcy, “they have more children than guineas, and will not pay you, except with constables and gallows.”
There was a small, unwilling chuckle from the man behind the leader. Even the man at the horses’ heads relaxed a touch, his pistol dipping by an inch.
Darcy could almost see the crack in their certainty. He again moved his weight, very slightly, to stand even more squarely between Miss Bennet and the nearest gun.
“You are making this worse,” Darcy said to her between his teeth, low enough that the men could not catch the words.
“After you announced yourself as a magistrate and they laughed?” she murmured without looking at him. “I do not believe that is possible.”
“Their indifference to my office is telling,” he said. “Men who hear that a magistrate stands before them and yet persist are either desperate or greedy, and far less likely to listen to reason. You ought not to have exposed yourself to them.”
“You are quite right. Your eloquence had very nearly persuaded one of those men to fire into the coach,” she returned in a whisper. “I thought it better to assist you here than wait for that moment.”
“It is why I told you to lay on the floor,” he said, gritting his teeth while the leader tossed back orders to his men.
“And you do not think he understands that is precisely where we would be?”
“This is no better,” Darcy insisted under his breath. “You have given them exactly what they asked for.”
“I have given them something they did not ask for,” she hissed. “They expected a princess, and they find only a Miss Bennet. If they look at me and still choose to believe I will command a great price, they are fools.”
“You are too stubborn for your own good,” he said.
“You are too arrogant for yours,” she answered at once. Then, after a pause, she added, “And stupidly brave.”
The words startled him. He felt them as keenly as the cold air upon his face.
“What else would you have had me do, Mr. Darcy?”
He had no answer to that which would not be an admission that he preferred any risk to her being in their sight.
“Enough of this,” the leader said, impatient now. He shifted his grip upon the pistol. “I did not come out to be instructed in my business by a fine gentleman and his lady. We waste time. Whether she is a princess or a farmer’s brat, she will serve. Bring her forward.”
Darcy felt her stiffen beside him, a small intake of breath.
Before she could step around him, he let his arms drop as if weariness had at last overcome them.
The movement was unhurried. His left arm swept Miss Bennet behind him at the same time his greatcoat swung aside.
For one instant the polished butt of his pistol showed against the dark wool; in the next it lay in his right hand.
The men saw it. They could not fail.
The leader swore and flung up his own pistol in haste.
The man at the horses’ heads cried out and turned, dragging his weapon round.
There was no discipline in the movement, only panic.
Darcy had time to think, with a curious clarity, that he must not fire first. To do so would set all of them to shooting at once.
He did not move. His finger rested on the trigger. The slightest pressure would be enough.
“Steady,” he warned, and his own voice sounded distant to his ears.
The leader’s finger tightened. The other man’s pistol went off first, a ragged blast that tore the air. The crack made the leader startle, and he fired too.
The shots sounded one just after the other. Snow and frozen earth burst from the side of the hollow a yard above Darcy’s head and the frost-bitten bark of a tree exploded. Something hard sliced his upper arm like the tip of a foil and the impact made him stumble.
The horses plunged. Anders swore; he and Johnson fought for control.
The smoke was sharp in Darcy’s nose. His arm burned, but the pain was distant, as if it belonged to someone else.
He did not lower his pistol.
“Are you well?” he asked, his heart hammering with urgency. He wished he could see her, but he did not dare take his eyes off the men before him.
“I am,” she said.
Darcy’s lungs opened again; he could breathe, he could focus on the rogues before him. “That was ill done,” he called to them, keeping his voice even. “You have wasted your charge.”
The leader blinked through the drifting smoke. His empty pistol wavered in his hand. For the first time, real fear sat naked upon his face.
“You may observe,” Darcy continued in the same level tone, “that your friend there has a club, not a gun, and that both your pieces are now spent. Mine is a double-barrelled pistol. I have two shots yet to fire.” The change in their expressions offered him hope that there were no additional men hiding in the shrubbery.
He heard Miss Bennet draw a slow breath.
The man with the club cast a glance at the leader that was not respectful.
“There are still four of us, and only the three of them,” he muttered. “And one must hold the horses.”
“Unlike your friends,” Darcy said, his gaze fixed upon the leader, “I hit what I aim at. Which would leave you at a disadvantage in numbers.” His smile was grim. “Which two shall it be?”
The club man cursed under his breath. His boots shifted on the frozen ground. A look passed between him and the man who had been near the horses but had scampered back when the shots frightened them.
For a moment no one moved, held there in a tense tableau. Darcy felt the weight of the pistol in his hand, the heat in his injured arm, Miss Bennet’s presence behind him. He did not wish to shoot a man, but he would put a ball through the chest of any man who took another step towards her.
The hollow was so quiet that the sound at first seemed part of the ringing in his ears. Then it grew, a horn blast, long and high. Then hoof beats. Horses were coming down the road behind the bend at a brisk pace.
The lookout, who had been a silent shadow upon the bank, straightened.
“Mail coach,” he called.
A mail coach was heavily armed. It was also granted the right of way. “Move the carriage to the side of the road,” he called out to Anders.
Even as he spoke, the horn sounded a second time, clear and long from somewhere beyond the curve. The note slid along the sides of the hollow and came back upon itself, so that for a moment it seemed as if the air was full of warning.
The leader’s expression altered. He looked at the felled limb, at the coach, at Darcy’s pistol.
He did not look up towards the bank, but Darcy could see him imagining it: the armed guard, the extra men, the driver who would not relish pulling up in a blocked road to find strangers with guns in their hands.
The club-man spat into the snow. “We are not armed for a mail coach,” he said bitterly. “Especially not now.”
“Their guard will have a blunderbuss,” Darcy said. “He will fire into the midst of you and count it a good morning’s work.”
Miss Bennet stood very still, but her hand touched the small of his back.
The horn sounded again, nearer this time. The horses tossed their heads, ears pricked, but Anders and Johnson had managed to lead them to the side. Not one man had moved to stop them.
There was an exchange of looks, a rapid, uneasy shifting of eyes. The leader swore once, low and vicious.
“Off,” he snapped at his men. “Quick now.”
The would-be abductors wasted no time. The man from the horses’ heads scrambled up the side of the hollow, clutching at gorse and roots.
The man with the club followed, his boots slipping on frozen clods.
The others went after them in a scramble of dark coats and rough hands, until the hedge and broken brush had swallowed them all.
Only the trace of their feet in the snow showed where they had been.
“Into the coach, Miss Bennet,” Darcy commanded.
She did not argue. Whatever courage had brought her to his side in the first instance did not extend to remaining. He followed her as she set her hand for an instant upon his sound arm as she mounted the step and disappeared within.
He closed the door, took a deep breath, and turned at once to the horses.
Darcy lowered his pistol slowly, his hand remarkably steady considering the turmoil still churning in his chest. He should be thinking strategically, but his mind circled one inescapable fact: he had been willing to die for her.
Not out of gentlemanly obligation, not from abstract duty, but from a raw, visceral need to keep her safe.
The realization unsettled him more than the pistols had.
Fraud or princess, liar or victim—somehow, she had become important to him in a way he did not understand and could not reason away.
The sound of the horn reached his ears. It was much closer. “Johnson, run up the rise and signal them to slow. We have made room, but the tree is still blocking their way.”
Johnson, who had been standing stiff against the coach as if he feared to breathe, set off at a trot towards the bend.
The pain in Darcy’s arm was more noticeable now. He tucked the weapon back into the inner pocket of his coat, the movement tugging at the sleeve of his left arm and sending a fresh throb along the line where the ball—or a shard of rock—had cut through his coat and grazed him.
The horn sounded again, and the mail coach swung faintly into view, its red wheels bright against the snow.
Johnson stood in the road ahead, waving his arms like a man possessed.
The driver swore at him but drew his team down to a trot.
The guard, perched high behind with his horn, had taken out his blunderbuss and was peering keenly over the side.
Darcy stepped forward into the open as they approached.
“Your way will clear in a moment,” he called. “We were waylaid, but the men have run. If we could have a little help to remove the obstruction, you will soon be back to speed.”
The guard’s eyes ran over the scene in a quick, practised survey. His expression hardened as his eyes landed on Darcy.
“Highwaymen?” he called back. He sounded incredulous, for highwaymen had all but disappeared from England’s roads.
Darcy inclined his head. “Fools,” he said. “They fled at the sound of your horn.”
“And the sight of Mr. Darcy’s pistol,” Johnson added, with a glance over his shoulder that was half awe, half relief.
Darcy shook his head once, a small movement that he hoped would silence Johnson. It had not been clear what the men would have risked had the mail coach not made the decision for them.
A man riding on the back of the stagecoach jumped down to assist Anders and Johnson with the branch. Darcy meant to help, but Anders shook his head. “You only have one good arm, sir. Besides, it’s not so very large.”
It did not take long before the road was clear.
The guard spat down into the snow and spoke a few rapid words to the driver.
As soon as his man was again in position, the driver flicked his whip and the mail coach rumbled on past them at a cautious pace, wheels jolting over the marks where the felled limb had lately lain.
As they passed, the guard touched the brim of his hat to Darcy with a rough sort of respect.
“Much obliged to you, sir,” he said. “We shall make a report to the postmaster at the next town. See to that arm. They are more trouble when they are left.”
Darcy touched the brim of his hat.
The coach went on, gathering speed as it climbed out of the hollow. Silence settled in its wake. The air smelt of powder and cold and the coppery smell of the blood on his sleeve.
Darcy looked down at it. The dark cloth of his coat was torn along the upper arm, the edges stiffened where blood had begun to dry.
Now that there was no immediate need to ignore it, the pain announced itself with more insistence.
His arm felt heavy and hot, as if someone had bound a band of iron around the muscle.
He flexed his fingers. They moved with only a little pain from the wound. Not deep, then, only inconvenient.
“Are either of you hurt?” he asked.
Anders shook his head. There were beads of sweat upon his brow, though the day was bitter.
“Not I, sir,” he said. “Nor Johnson.”
Darcy was grateful to them for calming the horses. He had seen a bolting team do a great deal of damage, and as much as Mrs. Hobart irritated the life out of him, he would not wish her harmed.
“Look to the horses,” he said. “We will not remain here.”
Anders had already gone to the harness. He ran his hands along leather and buckle with the reflex of long habit, his eyes on his work rather than on the scarred bank.
“All is well,” he said after a moment.
“Then let us leave this place,” Darcy said.
He turned back to the carriage and set his good hand upon the door. For an instant he let himself feel the weight of what lay behind it: two women, one foolish and loud, one too courageous for his comfort. Then he opened it and stepped in.